MORE than 250 mobile phones have been lost or stolen from Coventry City Council staff in the last three years.

The figures, revealed following a Freedom of Information Act request from the Telegraph, show that a total of 258 mobile phones and 20 laptops potentially containing sensitive information have gone missing.

The authority says that while many of the devices may have contained important data, none of it would have been accessible.

A spokesman for the city council said: “As a council we work to ensure that all our staff practice safe systems of working with sensitive and personal information, including taking care of any equipment that is issued to them as part of their duties such as laptops or smart phones.

“All of our council laptops and smartphones that are used for personal or sensitive information, especially those that contain personal information, are encrypted, to ensure that if they are unfortunately lost or stolen, no information can be accessed, and that service users, the public and staff are not put at risk.

“In addition to a range of training and awareness raising work with staff, password regimes require staff to have complex passwords in place, that can’t be guessed, and are changed frequently to prevent unauthorised access to systems and devices which contain or access sensitive or personal information”

The figures actually show a gradual decrease in the number of missing phones in the last three years.

And 19 of the laptops stolen from the authority were taken in one break-in that took place in June this year.

Michael Parker, from national campaign group NO2ID said it was unlikely that the missing phones were packed with personal details, but said their loss was “by no means trivial”.

“From the point of view of providing user names, passwords and that sort of thing these losses could lead to a security breach,” he said.

“The chance of a smartphone being stacked with ratepayers details is small though. It’s clear that the civil service needs to be more careful though.”